A tale of two bishops.

THE first bishop, Roderick Wright, Roman Catholic Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, disappeared, leaving his shepherdless flock perplexed. They prayed for him: but were not perplexed for long. It soon emerged that he had run off with a divorced woman whom he had counseled eight years earlier. She left a message for her two teenage children, telling them, when they came home from school, to seek help from nearby relatives. (DEAR KIDS, I'VE LEFT YOU FOR A BISHOP -- Daily Mirror.) He has since submitted his resignation, and it has been revealed that he is the father of a 15-year-old boy by another, and now very indignant, woman. (HE LIVED A LIE, SAYS MOTHER. CHURCH LEADERS SHOCKED -- Daily Telegraph.) Worst of all, church spokesmen seemed to feel, he sold his story to a tabloid newspaper for an alleged e300,000. ("I SINNED . . ." -- News of the World.)

The whole incident has provoked a fresh debate on whether the requirement of celibacy for Roman Catholic priests should be abandoned. The argument has acquired new impetus, in Britain as in America, both from a shortage of priests in some areas and because some Protestant clergy, seeking refuge in the Catholic Church from the ordination of women, are being ordained as priests although they are married. Celibacy for Church of England clergy was abandoned in the sixteenth century so that the marriage of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer could be recognized.

Some two thousand Roman Catholic priests in Britain are thought to have left the Church during the past twenty years in order to "pursue a relationship." The responses of Cardinal Hume, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, to the Argyll affair was that the rule might have to be relaxed. Modern society's "obsession with sex" made the ideal of celibacy harder to sustain: too many excellent men were being lost to the priesthood. Cardinal Winning, however, the leader of Scotland's Roman Catholics, disagreed; sympathetic though he might be with "Brother Roddy," the principle could not be compromised. (BISHOP MUST DUMP LOVE TO STAY PRIEST --The Sun.)

The problem is, of course as old as -- indeed much older than --Heloise and Abelard. Transgressions have never been uncommon. The bishop of Galway had to resign four years ago, when it was revealed that he had fathered a son. As Cardinal Hume pointed out, the celibacy of the priesthood is a law of the Church, not of God, and is therefore alterable. It remains, nevertheless, intimately bound up with most Catholics' idea of priesthood as a special and sacrificial calling. Nor is the argument unconnected with modern attitudes to marriage. Willingness to take a vow of lifelong celibacy and willingness to take a vow of lifelong matrimonial fidelity are two sides of the same coin. If one is considered too hard, the other may seem so too.

The second Bishop's Tale inclines more to comedy than personal tragedy, but it made equally big headlines. Robert Runcie, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, wanted his biography written by some safe hand. So he approached Humphrey Carpenter, the agnostic son of an Anglican bishop and a well-regarded biographer, notably of J. R. R. Tolkien. Carpenter agreed but found himself unable, or unwilling, to construct an orthodox biography, probably because it would have been too dull. Instead, from a series of wide-ranging tape-recorded chats with Runcie, Runcie's wife, and various people who knew them, he compiled a mischievous, highly entertaining, gossipy book about the archbishop and his dealings not only with fellow churchmen but with establishment personages from the Queen downward.

Runcie had imposed no restrictions on Carpenter's use of the tapes, for which indeed he received a modest sum of money: but, when he read the manuscript, he was appalled and tried vainly to have it withdrawn. "I have done my best," he said in a letter included as a postscript, "to die before this book is published. It now seems possible that I shall not succeed . . . I shall try to keep my sense of humor and the perspective of eternity." What he had wanted was more serious consideration of a twentieth-century archbishop's role. Carpenter, being a writer who likes to be read, concentrated on lively anecdotes and unguarded comments. Newspaper serialization and summaries have highlighted these even more.

Runcie, for example, admitted that he had long known about the Prince of Wales's adulterous affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, and had considered the marriage to Diana (which he described publicly as "the stuff of fairy tales") to be an arranged affair. He had found the Prince, the future Supreme Governor of the Church of England, to be more interested in a vague spirituality: "I think he had given up on the Church of England before I arrived." Runcie had counseled Diana as if in a confirmation class, but this was not a big success. "When you began on abstract ideas you could see her eyes clouding over. Her eyelids became heavy." He had been a friend of Lady Fermoy, her grandmother, who "was totally a Charles person and regarded Diana as an actress, a schemer -- all of which is true, of course."

A large percentage of the clergy were homosexual, Runcie told Carpenter. Some were quite outstanding priests and "with treatment" could even marry and have children. He had enjoyed their friendship, but "I've always been uneasy that they might stab me in the back because I wasn't one of them." He himself had discovered as a young man the joys of female company (but had never, as it were, inhaled).

And so on. Public, or at least press, reaction weighed complex layers of responsibility. Had Carpenter betrayed a naive Runcie by publishing what were meant to be confidences? Was Runcie a congenital blabbermouth, betraying those toward whom he had not only an official, but a pastoral, duty of discretion? Had there been a genuine misunderstanding? Had Carpenter made sly insinuations (when he said, for instance, that Runcie was "flirtatious with both sexes") or simply revealed Runcie for what he was, a man "usually to be found nailing his colors to the fence"?

Clifford Longley, a leading Roman Catholic commentator, said that Runcie took it for granted that anyone with whom he had dealings would behave like an English gentleman and an Anglican, two concepts which merged in his mind. He had a certain idea of Christian England, an England of good manners, green grass, and mild religion. "For such people religion is much more about being polite to God than about scaling the heights of mysticism."

More typically, John Junor, the veteran ex-editor of the Sunday Express, called Runcie vain, arrogant, indecisive, a man with no fixed principles of any kind, indiscreet and two-faced, a sanctimonious creep, about whom the only good thing to be said was that he had at least been better than the present Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey.

How much do these episcopal squalls matter? From one point of view, not a great deal. Just as the Pope may be infallible but not impeccable, so episcopal indiscretions have no bearing on the truth or otherwise of religion. On the other hand, they and the responses they brought do contribute to a general feeling that the Christian churches now are built not on rock but on sand, shifting beneath the feet of the faithful. As another commentator, an Anglican clergyman who moved to Rome, observed, "Whether Runcie made the Church of England what it is today, or simply reflected what it had long since become, hardly matters. He reflected a malaise that afflicts not only the Church but the age in which we live."

Both episodes show a Church not standing against the world but pathetically anxious to accommodate the world: a Church talking about the wrong things. If confirmation were needed, it has just been supplied by the unveiling of a Christmas advertising campaign, designed to attract young people. (SEASONS'S BLEATINGS -- Daily Mail.) Its keynote poster consists of a kindergarten scrawl depicting three crowned figures above the words "BAD HAIR DAY?! You're a virgin, you've just given birth, and now three kings have shown up." Then in very small letters: "Find out the happy ending at a church near you." The pious publications are very proud of what they believe to be the up-to-dateness of their wording. ("Bad hair day" is, in fact, California teenspeak, circa 1990.) One said: "Peace and goodwill to all men has had a good run. It's time for something else." Archbishop Carey has approved the campaign. Make that a Tale of Three Bishops.